


she's the dust upon the sill

by kiranxrys



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Episode Related, F/F, Hopeful Ending, Missed Opportunities, Non-Explicit Sex, prompt: pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26212798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiranxrys/pseuds/kiranxrys
Summary: Kira Nerys and Jadzia Dax have accumulated a long list ofalmostsover the years.
Relationships: Jadzia Dax/Kira Nerys
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42
Collections: Star Trek Bingo Summer 2020





	she's the dust upon the sill

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Star Trek Bingo Summer 2020 event.
> 
> The episodes referenced/used in this fic include The Siege, Fascination, Rejoined, Crossfire, The Darkness and the Light, You are Cordially Invited, Resurrection and Change of Heart, ranging across seasons 2-6. A few lines are lifted from those episodes, but it's mostly missing scene/AU.
> 
> Fic title from Chewing Cotton Wool by The Japanese House.

“How long are you planning on keeping the nose?”

Kira watches, trying to repress a smile, as Dax reaches up to touch her own face, fingers running lightly along the small ridges of her nose. Dax frowns for a moment then laughs, the corners of her eyes crinkling in a sweet way that pleases Kira more than it should, probably. After the horrors of the day – how close the Circle came to victory, how nearly the Bajor they’ve been rebuilding was lost. The Cardassians almost won. And Kira almost gave up, would’ve given up, if not for Dax. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Dax replies, sitting back in her singed and slightly torn Starfleet uniform with a faint smile. “I think it’s quite striking on me. Might draw some eyes on the Promenade, don’t you think?”

“I said it suited you, didn’t I?”

“Mm. Not sure about those robes, though. I’m not sure orange is my colour.”

Kira glances towards the front of the runabout, suddenly self-conscious, but both of the Starfleet officers piloting the ship are distracted muttering between themselves. She feels odd being so… _casual_ with Dax – or should she try to think of her as Jadzia, now? Dax has told her a thousand times she should feel free to call her by her given name instead of that of the symbiont residing inside her, but it feels unfair when Dax does not have the same right. No one uses the name Nerys for Kira, not anymore. 

“I’m glad we were on this mission together, Kira,” Dax comments, still staring at her with those alarmingly blue eyes. 

She doesn’t know what to say to that. They’re not friends – not quite, and she can’t imagine why Dax would enjoy her company beyond them being colleagues, sharing a similar cause. She knows, now, that Dax and the rest of her Starfleet friends do have Bajor’s best interests are heart. They don’t understand Kira’s homeworld in the way she does, don’t quite understand what ‘best interests’ even means for Bajor, but they try. And Dax did save her life today. “I… We make a good team.”

“A _good_ team?” Dax asks, leaning towards Kira with a shocking spark in her eyes. “I think we could give Benjamin and I a run for our money!”

“Well, I don’t know,” Kira says. She draws her arms around herself, cringing at the place where her body still aches from the injuries she suffered in the ship crash. She’s got used to not being in pain over the past months. Even the emotional sting has begun to fade. It makes her uncomfortable. “You’ve known Sisko across lifetimes.”

“And who says we won’t?”

Kira winces again, unappreciative of how much the thought alone unnerves her, where she might’ve once looked upon it with the cold acceptance of a child of war. “I hope not,” she mutters.

“Don’t worry,” Dax tells her, seeming to realise her mistake. “I don’t plan on dying anytime soon.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Dax is close that they’re almost touching. She’s not sure what to do with that. Maybe they are friends, she can’t really tell. Friendship during the occupation was something different. It was desperate, born of circumstance, and came with the knowledge either of you could die tomorrow and it’s easier not to become too attached. If Dax _wants_ to be her friend, she doubts she can avoid it – she’s beyond determined in everything she does. It’s one of the strengths Kira has no choice but to admire in her.

From the front of the runabout comes the soft chirp on an incoming communication.

“It’s Commander Sisko,” one of the Starfleet pilots announces. “For Major Kira.”

Dax takes the initiative before Kira can even think of what to say, nodding with lives-earned authority. “Put him through, we’ll take it from back here.” Even in her ruined uniform, hair falling messily around her shoulders and a smudge of stubborn dirt down the side of her cheek, blending with the Trill spots revealed now she’s out of her Bajoran robes, Dax is a picture of grace and control. She’s the kind of person Kira always aspired to be – a leader, but one with charisma and friendly smiles that draw people in, not frowns that push them away.

Sisko’s face appears on the screen beside them with another mechanical chirp and Kira tenses automatically, a habit she’s still trying to unlearn. She’s not helped by the heaviness marring his expression. She’s seen that face before. A thousand times – no, more than a thousand times, but it’s not a thing she would care to count. 

“Dax, Kira,” Sisko greets. “I’m glad to see both of you are okay. You made it to the ministers just in time.”

“I’d prefer not to cut it so close next time,” Kira admits.

Sisko nods. “With any luck, there won’t be a next time. I like the nose, old man.”

“Thanks,” Dax says, wearing a tempered smile. “I’m thinking I might keep it. Is there something wrong?”

“I have some bad news,” he sighs. “I wanted the Major to know before she arrived on the station.”

Kira has received plenty of bad news before. She steels herself and waits for the blow to land. 

“Li Nalas is dead.”

She wasn’t ready for that. Something secure inside her chest slips, allowing a small shocked gasp to breath out. In her mind, she murmurs a tiny, instinctive prayer to the Prophets for Li’s safe passage into what lies beyond. She can sense the sting of tears in her eyes – unusual, for her. Blinking them away, she feels a warm, soft hand reach out to grip her own, fingers smooth and soothing against the callouses that linger from Kira’s life when Deep Space 9 was still Terok Nor. “How?” she asks, just a whisper.

“He sacrificed himself to save me,” Sisko explains quietly. “He didn’t suffer.”

Kira takes a deep breath. “Then he died how he lived,” she says, trying to pull herself together. “I’d expect nothing less from someone like him. We’ll see you shortly, Commander.”

“Very well. Sisko out.” The communication cuts off, the screen returns to black, and Kira shudders with the effort of keeping in her pain. She’s let herself grow weak since the occupation ended. Jadzia squeezes her hand tighter, puts her free arm around Kira’s shoulders. A wordless gesture, one Kira might usually have abhorred. Instead, she finds herself leaning into it, eyes closed as she seeks to regain composure. She really thought Li Nalas would be the one to save Bajor. To bring it back from the brink. She lets Jadzia Dax hold onto her until the runabout docks, stepping back onto the station with a face and heart of stone.

*

Kira is fairly certain she’s never been so humiliated in her life. Prophets, it would’ve been bad enough if it was only one-sided – some awkward, uncontrolled advances they could both put out of their minds. Even better if it was a stranger, somebody visiting the station for the Gratitude Festival who she’d never have to see again. But _Julian._ And in the middle of the party, too, right in front of everyone. The doctor will probably get over it soon enough – these kinds of social slips are common for him – but she knows she’ll be thinking about it for months to come. Worse still, even now she can feel the lingering desire, unnaturally heightened and tempting her towards that meet-up with Julian after all.

With a groan, she buries her face in her hands and wishes for death. She can still smell Julian’s cologne, undercut only by Jadzia’s sweet perfume sitting beside her. Bajoran lilies. She must’ve bought it from one of the traditional vendors on the Promenade. _Jadzia._ None of it seems to be bothering her. She stretches out on the sofa beside Kira, sipping from a shallow glass of whisky, humming along to the Earth music playing in the room that Kira does not recognise. The fact she spent the past few hours throwing herself at her boss and best friend appears to have slipped her mind. 

“Aw, c’mon, Kira,” Jadzia sighs, smile only a little wicked. “It’s not _that_ bad.”

“I’m never going to live this down,” she replies. “If I fall down the turbolift shaft and break both of my legs, I won’t even be able to face walking into the Infirmary for treatment. Not after I...”

“If you fell down the turbolift shaft and broke both of your legs, you wouldn’t be _able_ to walk into the Infirmary if you tried,” Jadzia points out.

“No, I suppose I wouldn’t. Though I hope you wouldn’t just leave me down there.”

Jadzia laughs – a lovely sound, and if Kira wasn’t so drunk on fascination she might try to make it happen again. “Of course not. I’d climb down myself if I had to.”

“You’d do that for anyone.”

“Hm, maybe.” Jadzia shrugs, brushing past Kira as she goes to set her now empty glass on the coffee table. Kira’s skin still feels feverish, and it burns slightly as the whisper of purple fabric goes by. “But I might try to use the transporter before leaping in to rescue someone else with my bare hands.”

Kira frowns. “So what you’re saying is, I make you stupid?”

“Something like that.” Jadzia smirks and winks, like Kira’s supposed to understand what that means. Being friends with Jadzia is difficult like that, at least for her. She always feels as if she’s missing something.

A sudden pain twinges in the side of her head, not much more than a momentary pinch that she blinks away with a wince. For a few seconds, it’s difficult to breathe. She glances sideways at Jadzia, practically glowing in the soft, warm light of her quarters. Her skin is so smooth and pretty, her eyes so sharp and bright and blue. Purple looks beautiful on her. Prophets, Jadzia Dax is the most gorgeous woman in the galaxy. That’s simply an observation, of course. Who _wouldn’t_ notice it? Who _couldn’t?_

“Kira, is there something wrong?”

“I… Nerys.”

“What?”

She shuffles up the sofa, feeling more certain than she can remember being in months. It’s a moment of clarity. A once in a lifetime moment of clarity. “You should call me Nerys.”

Jadzia doesn’t even question it. That’s part of what is so beautiful about her, so stunning and earnest. “If that’s what you’d like.”

“It is,” she affirms. The room seems rather hot all of a sudden. Her heart is racing, running along like a rabid Cardassian vole, and there’s little she can do to calm it. Jadzia leans in a little closer, frowning, waiting. 

“Jadzia, I-”

The door chimes. As if snapping out of a trance, Jadzia jumps a fraction and calls a hasty, “come!” The door opens and a Bajoran nurse pokes her head through, shattering the tension. 

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” she says, smiling. “Doctor Bashir sent me. He wanted to check both of you were doing okay. He didn’t come himself for…”

“Obvious reasons,” Jadzia finishes for her, winking again in a way that brings an irritating flush to Kira’s cheeks. “You can tell him we’re both fine. Though,” she adds, “some of our egos might still be recovering.”

The nurse nods, smiling knowingly, and excuses herself. Kira realises she’s sitting weirdly close to Jadzia and pushes herself away, back down the sofa. She can’t remember when the distance between them became so small. Her mind must still be muddled from the fever. 

“You okay?” Jadzia asks. She reaches for the liquor bottle to pour herself another glass. When she offers a share of the whisky, Kira shakes her head with determination. The last thing she needs is her brain being messed with any more. She has an odd sense she almost just did something very embarrassing, though she can’t say what. 

“Yes, fine,” she promises. “Just… embarrassed. I don’t understand how you can brush it all off so easily.”

“The way I see it,” Jadzia says, “it was something out of my control. There’s no sense in letting it get to you because there’s nothing you could’ve done. And besides, there’s no shame in feeling, _Nerys._ We don’t choose who we love.”

“I do _not_ love Julian.”

Jadzia laughs again. “I know – that’s not what I meant. You’ve just got to cut yourself a break, that’s all. And if you can’t not be embarrassed by something, at least try to see the funny side.”

“The funny side, right.” It is fairly amusing. Would be hilarious, if not for the mess she’s going to have to clean up in the morning. Julian will be easy enough. Bareil will be harder. _Men are always a mistake._ She wishes she wasn’t involved at all. “Jadzia?”

“Mm?”

“Have you ever… I mean, how do you know it’s meant to be, with someone?”

There’s a pause before Jadzia replies, ever so slightly tense. “Are we talking about Bareil here?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kira sighs. She relaxes back onto the sofa, half-closing her eyes. “I just wondered whether you knew how you can be sure. So you don’t make a mistake.”

“To me, it’s… well, it’s when you can’t imagine being able to live without them. Sort of as if they were a part of you.”

That scares her, in a way. Kira knows she could never exist needing someone like that, where their loss would mean losing a piece of herself. Fortunately, she knows she can live without anyone. She’s been doing it her entire life. It doesn’t matter how many people the Prophets decide she has to lose.

Kira Nerys is one whole, entire being. She belongs only to herself.

*

Jadzia Dax feels as though her heart is breaking in two. Or three, maybe. One piece in the room behind her, one piece in Camelot, the third left to rot in her chest, slowly bleeding and dying and turning to dust. Benjamin would tell her – in the kindest way possible, of course – to get a grip, if he ever heard her saying that. But it’s true.

Nothing has ever hurt worse than this. 

“Dax, please wait.”

She freezes halfway down the corridor, hands balled into fists, trying not to cry. There’s a faint tang of blood in her mouth from where she bit the inside of her cheek, a consequence of her fight not to cry out, the pain in her chest was so twisting and sharp. 

“I’m sorry.”

Lenara looks so beautiful. Her apology is poison, a needle digging beneath Jadzia’s skin and injecting venom into her veins. It’s worse than silence, if just before in Lenara’s room had been the last time in their lives they ever spoke. 

“Don’t apologise.” She feels angry. Anger was the one emotion she could never get a hold of. “You’ve made your choice.”

“I’m not you, Dax.” Lenara takes a single step closer down the hall, but no more. The distance between them has to be great, now. Maybe Lenara’s decision is for the best, after all. Jadzia doesn’t think she could take it to have her as close as just on the other side of Deep Space 9, and not be allowed love her. _Outcasts. Exiles._ The fate for tainted symbionts, a betrayal so rare it makes the cost of the punishment justifiable to the people of her homeworld. 

“I know,” she breathes. “I know you’re not me.”

“I’m not Nilani, either.”

She dares to meet Lenara’s eyes now, self-resolve slipping. “You know that’s not the reason I love you. Not the only reason. And I _know_ you don’t only love me for Torias. I _know_ you don’t.” She doesn’t know, exactly. She hopes. She hopes that even for a few brief days, they had something more. 

“I won’t be the last,” Lenara says.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she asks, spitting the poison back out in her rage – not at Lenara, never at Lenara, but at Trill and the heartless laws that keep them apart and the small truth she feels deep in the empty corners of her mind that Lenara is right, and that she is wrong. It would destroy the both of them.

“I know you love Major Kira,” Lenara murmurs in the silence of the corridor, gaze cast down. 

“I love _you.”_

“Joined Trill understand better than anyone the ability to love more than just one person, Dax. I’ve… I’ve seen the way you look at her, as much as you look at me. If you only tried to open up to her the way you have to me-”

“If I feel anything for Nerys, she _certainly_ doesn’t feel the same way,” Jadzia interrupts, hands clenched tight behind her. 

Lenara considers for a moment. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“If you’re going to leave, _leave,”_ she replies, shoving the suggestion away. “I don’t need you trying to make up for it by meddling in _my_ love life.”

“Dax, I’m only trying to help you. Kira clearly likes you-”

“Of course she likes me!” Jadzia doesn’t care if the entire corridor hears. Her heart is breaking. She won’t try to mend it with false hope. “We’re friends. But she doesn’t like me… like that. The man she loved is barely cold in his grave. I won’t- I can’t…”

“I just want you to be happy,” Lenara whispers.

“I can’t be happy. Not without you.”

“I know you can be.”

Jadzia turns and walks away without another word. She walks and walks, skipping turbolifts and taking tucked away emergency tubes and stairs, trying to avoid the inevitable. She ends up there anyway, pressing the doorbell with her mind half somewhere else, almost hoping Deep Space 9’s first officer is doing _anything_ else tonight. 

The door opens to Kira’s face, cheeks warm, eyes tired. Dressed in a dark red robe with slightly puffed sleeves, hair tousled. So beautiful. And Jadzia feels guilty for thinking it, and Lenara’s words are burning in her brain. Her lip trembles. The first tear slides down her cheek, hot against her skin.

“Jadzia,” Kira says softly, expression searching and nervous. “What’s- what’s wrong?”

“I asked her to stay,” Jadzia replies. Her voice cracks. “But she won’t.”

“Oh. Come in, then,” Kira murmurs, ushering her inside. Before Jadzia knows what’s happening, Kira is pulling her into a tight embrace. Through curls of Kira’s hair, she sees the room is lit with golden candles for prayer. The tears are falling freely now, body wracked with sobs as she cries and cries, cries into Kira’s arms.

“I’m so sorry, Jadzia. I know how much she meant- _means_ to you.”

“How did you do it?” she asks, voice uneven and broken and filled with anguish. 

Kira doesn’t have to ask what she means. “I don’t know,” she answers. “At… at the beginning, I didn’t see how I could. But I did. I was strong.”

“I’m not as strong as you.”

“No,” Kira agrees, speaking quietly into Jadzia’s shoulder, breath warm against her neck. “You’re stronger.”

*

“Ugh, I’m bored. Let’s get out here.”

Kira turns to face Jadzia, startled. “What are you talking about?” she hisses, distracted by the way Jadzia fiddles with the collar of her blue dress uniform as she glares at the Bajoran congregation milling around on the other side of the room. “This is an official event – it’s important for Shakaar it goes smoothly. We can’t just _leave.”_

“Oh, why not? Come on, Nerys, don’t tell me you’re _enjoying_ yourself here.”

“I am, actually,” she replies. “It’s nice to see old friends again.”

Jadzia gives her an odd look. Truthfully, Kira is more than a little uncomfortable. It’s a bit too warm in the room, she hasn’t had enough to eat, and Shakaar keeps staring at her from in a distance in a disconcerting way, some strange implicative phrase he used earlier in her direction replaying over and over in the back of her mind.

“Just friends?” Jadzia asks.

She tries to snort, but it ends up coming out as more of an undignified cough. “I have _no_ idea what you mean by that.”

“Don’t you? Surely you’ve seen the way _your friend_ Shakaar Edon looks at you.” Although her words are teasing, there’s something a little sharp and bitter beneath Jadzia’s tone that makes her feel inexplicably guilty. _I can’t control Shakaar. I can’t control what he thinks or says or does or what he looks at._ She almost wishes she could. It might make for fewer hiccups in Bajoran politics – Sharkaar still hasn’t quite gotten over his habit of rambling.

“It’s not my fault where he looks,” she points out. “Besides, I’m not- not _interested_ in him, not like that.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Jadzia says. “He’s far too old for you.”

Kira’s brow shoots for the stars. “Says who?”

“Says me. Now, can we _please_ leave? No one would even notice if we just snuck off for a bit and came back before the speeches.”

“I don’t understand what’s gotten into you today,” she sighs, taking a sip of the too-sweet drink in her hand. “It’s something to do with Shakaar, isn’t it? Do you really hate him that much?”

Jadzia shrugs and turns up her nose, wearing a dispassionate expression. “I don’t have anything against him. He’s just so…”

“Just so what?”

“Predictable.” 

She doesn’t really know what to say to that. It feels like what Jake explained to her once was ‘déjà-vu’ – the sense this had all happened before. And it makes her bite her lip, perhaps because she has an inkling that Jadzia may be right. Shakaar _is_ predictable. He’s steady. He’s the kind of stability Bajor needs in these unstable times. Still, a riveting conversation with him can be difficult. He still prefers to talk about crop rotations and desalination plants, even after all these years.

She nearly drops her glass from surprise when Jadzia suddenly grabs her free hand, pulling her away from the corner of the room they chose to people-watch from. 

“Don’t look now,” Jadzia whispers, “but he’s trying to get a hold of you again.”

They’re only metres from the open door to the function room, through which dignitaries, religious figures, Starfleet officers and citizens alike are filing. Kira feels a breath of cool air. “And are you going to let him?”

“Not a chance.”

Well, that settles that, then. It’s difficult to be embarrassed by the way she’s letting herself be led around by her station’s headstrong science officer when she can see Jadzia’s delighted smile out of the corner of her eye, clearly pleased with getting her own way. Of course she is. Kira really ought to learn to say no to her. Shakaar’s going to get the wrong idea about this, she can already tell. If he _is_ trying to catch her attention just now. Per Jadzia’s instructions, she doesn’t look.

“Where are we going?” The corridor beyond the conference party room is chilly and filled with shadows. The only warmth is Jadzia’s soft hand holding her own.

“Who cares?”

As they turn a corner into an abandoned hallway, Kira thinks she hears footsteps. Jadzia must, too, because she puts her hand over her mouth and represses a giggle. 

“Kira? Are you there?”

_That’s him,_ Jadzia mouths. 

_I know,_ she replies silently, doing her best to glare. The footsteps are growing closer. Jadzia’s eyes twinkle with the light of stars sinking down into a deep blue ocean. Kira watches as she counts down from three on her fingers. This is it – the calm before the swooping fall, the way Kira used to feel before a battle, but so much less terrifying. Her heart skips a beat on _one._

“Run,” Jadzia whispers. Kira runs. She does not let go of Jadzia’s hand.

They’re hardly quiet in their escape – she’s one hundred percent sure Shakaar can hear them with no trouble, with the _thunk thunk_ of Jadzia’s boots on the ground and Kira’s uncontrolled, nervous, breathless laughter, and she doesn’t particularly care. He can deal with being snubbed for a night, if that’s what Jadzia wants. The air roars in her ears as they sprint down the corridor, take a left, take a right. No one’s around at this time of night, not in this part of the station. Jadzia gives up first, falling against the wall with a gasping laugh, clutching her stomach. Kira laughs too. What else could she do? Jadzia’s smile is endlessly infectious, and Kira sometimes wonders how she ever thought the two of them would not be friends.

_Made for each other._ It’s not hard to imagine that the Prophets intended for them to be together, gave Kira this last chance at happiness after all the death and pain. She slides down to the floor beside the half-hysterical form of Jadzia, letting her head fall against Jadzia’s shoulder.

“I can’t- I can’t believe we just _did_ that,” Jadzia chokes out, close to tears.

“It was your idea!”

“I know, but- I didn’t think you’d actually _agree_ to it.”

Kira smiles into the smooth fabric of Jadzia’s dress uniform. “Well, I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“I guess not.”

If Sisko noticed their rather undignified jailbreak, they’ll definitely be hearing about it tomorrow. Two command team officers, including the Bajoran First Officer of Deep Space 9, running away from Bajor’s First Minister like rebellious children. It’s not a good look. But she’s happy to be out of there, away from the stares and too sweet drinks. The temperature is just right with the combination of the cool corridor and the reassuring heat radiating from Jadzia’s body.

“How do you feel?” Jadzia asks.

“Out of breath. Young and… stupid.”

“Good,” she says, grinning. “That’s how it’s supposed to feel.”

Kira draws her head away, looks into Jadzia’s eyes. Jadzia seems _happy,_ and that’s enough to keep her smiling for weeks. Since Lenara Kahn left, Jadzia has been… different. Not so much sad as introspective. They didn’t see each other as much for a while. It stung. The space between them is essentially null, now – their noses are almost touching, Kira can feel the faint brush of Jadzia’s breath against her cheek. She reaches out for something to hold onto, a hand to tether her to the ground.

“Why did you want to leave?” she asks.

Jadzia holds her gaze. “I was sick of him staring at you from across the room, trying to make up his mind whether he was going to ask you out or not.”

“But _why?”_

“I think you know why.” Jadzia’s hand comes up to rest against Kira’s cheek, strangely cool against her burning skin. “Nerys.”

Jadzia is so close. She tries to think back through the past few hours – how much she’s had to drink, whether she could’ve accidentally ingested some kind of drug, whether Lwaxana Troi could be back on the station to wreak havoc on them all again. Jadzia’s eyes are so blue, her lips so soft and pink. And here the two of them are, collapsed in a corridor, running away from duty. 

Running away from responsibility. Kira’s responsibility to Bajor, to her people.

Jadzia is so close. Too close.

“I think we should get back to the function,” she murmurs, pulling away. Her heart is still racing, but not simply from excitement, exhilaration – from fear. _Why do I regret saying that? Why do I want to touch her?_ She shouldn’t. Jadzia is her friend. One of the few people in the universe she feels truly understands her at all.

The momentary pain and disappointment on Jadzia’s face, replaced with cold neutrality as quickly as it appears there, is enough to cut right to the core. 

_I almost kissed Jadzia Dax._ Most people would be proud of that. She feels only a sickening sense of shame.

She will never do it again.

*

The first thing Jadzia sees is the body of the dead Cardassian, burned through with phaser fire, his one good eye empty and unseeing. Beside him on the ground, a laser scalpel, the kind they use in the Infirmary. Then Benjamin steps aside to reveal Kira. Slumped over in the corner, clutching a phaser in one limp hand. Her red maternity uniform is dirty and torn at the sleeve. Jadzia pushes Odo out of the way as she scrambles to get closer, almost tripping Julian in the process. The rest of the world dissolves into blurs of the darkness and the light, and she nearly cries out in relief when she takes Kira’s hand in her own and feels the skin is warm – still living, still breathing.

“Nerys,” she murmurs, voice cracking on the name. “Nerys, please, are you all right?”

Julian looks up from his tricorder. “She’s fine. There’s a large amount of merfadon in her system.”

Jadzia turns to him, panicked again. “Merfadon?”

“It’s a sedative,” he explains calmly. “The makara herbs she’s been taking must have allowed her to remain conscious long enough to fight off her attacker. I’m giving her a counteragent now.” Jadzia watches the hypospray inject beneath the surface of Kira’s too-pale skin, never letting go of her hand. She knew what she’d been expecting when they entered the compound. She expected to find Kira dead. All of Kira’s friends – the members of her former resistance cell – had been murdered. Benjamin’s expression had been grim for the whole journey. And in a nasty, selfish way, Jadzia had been thinking about Worf. What he would say when he found out.

She does love Worf. She does.

Kira’s eyes blink open slowly. She sees Jadzia first, seems to reach out with unfocused eyes and steady breath to trail her shaking fingers along the edge of Jadzia’s jaw, down her bare throat.

“It’s okay,” Jadzia promises. “I’ve got you. We’ve got you.”

“We?” Kira murmurs, hand falling away as she looks beyond into the shadowy room. Jadzia wants to kiss her, as she always does, has for years. _It would have been you._ If Kira hadn’t chosen Shakaar. If Jadzia hadn’t thought she could be happy with Worf and tied her own hands. If things had been different. There were a few months where she believed she could be a peace with loving Kira Nerys. Today has proved the opposite. If they had found two corpses today instead of one, it would have ended her.

“This was the assassin then, Major?” Benjamin asks, kneeling down and nodding his head towards the body of the dead Cardassian. “Why the sedative?”

Kira’s brow creases – in confusion, almost. “He… he wanted to protect the innocent, and separate the darkness from the light.” She looks back to Jadzia, something profound in her dark eyes and the tormented combination of joy and agony they hide. “But he didn’t realise the light only shines in the dark. And sometimes innocence is just an excuse for the guilty.” Everyone is silent at her proclamation, words Jadzia feels she is the only one to understand. _The darkness and the light._ Not inseparable entities, not two opposites that never touch. The same souls. The same stories. Guilt twisting even the brightest moments to regret in their memories. And Jadzia grieves that she ever tried to tell Kira that day of Shakaar’s visit to the station, because perhaps if she hadn’t, all of this would be changed.

She sometimes wonders whether this universe is merely someone else’s mirror world, where everything is reflected with the taint of darkness and misery. Somewhere out there, is there a Jadzia Dax who would look on everything that happened here and think, _what a waste?_

“Let’s go home,” Kira says.

Benjamin stands again, troubled. “Sisko to _Defiant._ Five to beam up.”

Once they’re alone in crew quarters after Julian lets Kira go from sickbay, she breaks the silence. “Did you mean it?”

Grief has weakened Kira. She sits on the edge of an empty bunk, bent over from pain. Her hands rest against her middle like she’s trying to reassure herself the child she carries is still there. “Mean what?”

“Any of it. Are you guilty or innocent?”

“Are _we.”_

“I don’t know,” Jadzia says. “You tell me.”

Kira seems to think on it for a while, and in the meantime all Jadzia can hear, strangely enough, is the voice of Lenara Kahn, gentle and honest and seeing her for what she truly is. “Guilty,” Kira says eventually.

“I see. Well, I’ll go now. I’ll be on the bridge if you need m- need anything.” Jadzia doesn’t want to leave. But there doesn’t seem to be any other way. Better to serve her sentence as soon as possible. Maybe one day she can be free.

*

It’s a great party. Jadzia is having a great time. She’s not thinking about tomorrow, not thinking about her not-wedding, giving herself into the roar of the music and the shouts of joy. She’s perfectly happy. 

She’s also had at least two more drinks tonight than she should have. The people here all seem so… unfamiliar. She knows them – there are Jake and Nog, Morn asleep in a corner, Leeta helping herself to another slice of cake. It must be her third or fourth by now. Good for her. 

Where’s Kira? She hasn’t seen her for at least an hour now. This was supposed to be the last time she would get to look at Deep Space 9’s Bajoran First Officer up close, as anything even tentatively more than a friend. Before she sealed the deal, as it was. Before she did the _honourable_ thing. 

“Rom!” she yells across the room, targeting the only person who seems sober enough to know where Kira could be. “Have you seen the Major?”

The Ferengi looks her way with a start. “I- I saw her go with Constable Odo into the other room, not so long ago,” he answers. She can only just hear him over the throng.

“With _Odo?”_ Something nastily like anger flickers to life at the front of her mind, the same tinge of jealousy she used to quash with Bareil before he died, with Shakaar before Kira realised what an absolutely stale water cracker of a man he was and told him to go. Of course, Odo always _liked_ Kira a lot, but…

She doesn’t bother knocking before she opens the door. Who even cares what she sees? It’s all pointless anyway, none of it _matters._ They’ve already run out of lucky last chances. Now she can only be bitter and harsh and regret all the times she let herself pull away. She hears the sound of lowered voices coming from the small storage area leading off from her bedroom and slams on the door control panel, ignoring the way the world around her blurs and spins. She doesn’t know what she’s going to say. _Why,_ maybe. _Why did it turn out like this?_

Odo and Kira sit a few metres apart in the cramped space, heads bent in conversation. _Not fair._ Why did Kira leave her alone in that stupid party for this? She ignores their shock, jamming her finger in Odo’s direction. 

“Get out,” she demands. “Just… get out of here.”

Taken aback, Odo leaps to his feet and practically runs for the door. She knows why. Jadzia Dax can be a terrifying sight when she’s angry. Kira tries to move towards the door as well, muttering something apologetic, but Jadzia shakes her head.

“Not you. Just him.” Her head hurts so much. Like somebody’s trying to crush it between their hands. She turns away back towards the bedroom, catching one last glimpse of Odo’s retreating back in the shadows of the barely lit space. She always hated the style of beds on DS9, but just now hers looks like heaven. The smooth, cushioned surface calls her down. She shouldn’t have had that final drink. 

“Jadzia, what’s wrong?” Kira’s murmur comes close to her ear, a gentle, warm hand resting against her shoulder. Bare skin against bare skin. Still not enough. It never will be. “Is this about Sirella, because-”

Jadzia raises her head off the pillow to look Kira in the eye, fingers curling around the bedsheets in anger. “It’s not about Sirella,” she snaps. “You know what it’s about.”

Eyes widening, Kira draws back a little and her hand drops away. _No, not that._ It’s the opposite of what Jadzia needs. She needs to be closer right now, now before they go back to how it was at the beginning – long glances across the room, silent exchanges. Kira was looking so beautiful tonight. She was smiling. She isn’t smiling now. 

“I… I thought you _wanted_ to marry Worf,” Kira says.

“No,” she groans. “No, I never-” She drags herself back up into a sitting position, reaching for Kira desperately. “I only wanted you.” There it is. The brutal Dax honesty, cutting through to be ruinous and wreck all there ever was to be happy about in the world. 

Kira lets out a shuddering breath. Her eyelids flutter as Jadzia’s hands come up to clasp her face gently, holding her in a way they shouldn’t be, not now. Not after all these years. Not after all those times they were so close that Jadzia could taste the sharp Bajoran spiced perfumes on her lips and neither of them said a _word_.

“We… shouldn’t,” Kira whispers, turning her cheek into Jadzia’s palm. In her lap, she toys with the silver bracelet on her wrist – _family, family, family, home._ And here is Jadzia’s home, about to be ripped from her grasp once again. Her intoxicated brain is urging her in, though she knows she ought to stay. She would, if she was a good person. But she isn’t. That’s the thing about Jadzia Dax – she’s a terrible, awful person who smashes things to pieces, and the only person in the galaxy who makes her feel like anything more is Kira, the one constant, the missing brushstroke in a painting people all want to have to complete for themselves. 

“I don’t care,” Jadzia tells her. “Do you?”

“I- I suppose… not.” Even tipsy, Kira is still Kira. The small smile curling across her face is so uncertain, almost hopeful. “But Jadzia-”

“Don’t think about it. It’s the only way.” The only way for them to have what they need. One first time. One last time. One time to run away from consequences and give in to the stupid desires that have been driving them to survive for the past few years. Kira Nerys. Jadzia Dax. Just the two of them, in a universe alone.

“Okay,” Kira murmurs. “All right.” 

Then Jadzia is kissing her. It’s so easy when she’s imagined it so many times late at night when she should be thinking of something, of _someone_ else, and when they’ve been close to it on countless occasions, always kept apart by a barrier more imagined than real. Kira sighs and leans into her touch, slipping closer onto the comfort of Jadzia’s bed as she kicks off her heels to fall to the floor. A warm blush has risen to her cheeks, the flush spreading to every part of her that Jadzia can get her hands on. It’s not enough of Kira. It’s never enough, with Kira. It’s why they could never truly be together – they could never have enough, and then one day one of them would die and leave the other with nothing at all. 

Jadzia runs her hands through Kira’s hair, tugs at her pretty red dress, forgets everything else except for the body before her, the bright eyes shining with want and trepidation. She doesn’t care about anything beyond this room. She’d rather throw herself out of an airlock than lose this moment. She captures Kira’s mouth with her own once more and tries to make up for every missed opportunity with a single kiss, forgetting about tenderness. Clutching the folds of Kira’s dress, she pulls her down and rolls them over so she’s above, shoving Kira into the mattress. Kira gasps and squirms, a small squeak escaping her lips as Jadzia turns her attention to her neck, teeth scraping soft skin.

“Jadzia,” Kira breathes, a sweaty curl of red hair falling across her forehead in an almost artful sort of way.

“Nerys.”

Red. Her wedding dress is red. The drapes they hung up in Quark’s as decoration are red. But Kira’s hair is red. Her uniform is red, her dress is red. Her lips are red. Kira is all red and bright and hot like fire in her arms, laughing distractedly as she struggles with the fastening of Jadzia’s dress behind her back. She’s like this so rarely. Only ever for Jadzia. The whole party could be listening outside the door right now and it really wouldn’t bother her a bit. No one can blame her for wanting _this._

She takes everything she can. She forgets what they taught her on Trill. _For procreation, not enjoyment. Rise above temptations. You are not meant for romance. You are meant to carry on the story, the legacy._ And for what? What’s the purpose of living so many lives, just to be miserable? She hates them and their lies and their rules and their threats that kept her away from Kira for so long, until it was too late. She was never one for doing what she’s told, anyway. She has her hands under Kira’s clothes, her own dress nearly completely discarded, and the body below her thrums with desperation and hunger and the promise of something more she’s craved for what feels like centuries. 

“Prophets, _Jadzia,”_ Kira moans, reaching up to cover her own mouth with the back of her hand. “Should’ve done this- _sooner.”_

“Mm,” she agrees. “But better late than never.” And it has to be now. It’s all the time they have left.

*

Kira leaves quietly the next morning before Jadzia wakes – more importantly, before Worf can come to confront his fiancé about Sirella and whatever else he might’ve heard about the previous night. The time is almost 1000 hours. She’s supposed to be on duty. She pauses for a moment, eyes on Jadzia’s curled up form, at the smooth expanse of pale skin. Her Trill patterns stand out in the glow of one of the wall lights, left on dimly throughout the night. The guilt is already starting to sting. She’s not going to lie to herself and imagine she hadn’t known it would. 

_I knew what I was doing._ It follows her up to Ops for her shift, head aching and eyes squinting at the brightness of the lights. It follows her down to Quark’s during her lunch break a few hours later. _I knew._ When she arrives at the bar – not for any reason in particular except perhaps morbid curiosity, the desire to sink the knife in deeper – Quark’s various employees are working to remove any trace of a wedding. She’s not sure whether she should be relieved or not. 

Julian and Miles are hunched over at the bar, apparently attempting to stuff themselves with as much food as possible as quickly as they can. A huge buffet of unrecognisable meals lies before them. She gets the sense their Klingon bachelor party wasn’t quite as Jake had implied, since both looked more exhausted, starved and beaten-up than mannishly victorious. At the other end of the bar, Quark is talking in a hushed voice to a subordinate, muttering something along the lines of _cancellation fee_ and _lost income charges._

“What’s going on?” she calls to Julian and Miles as she approaches, casting her eyes over the scene.

Julian glances up from his plate and gives her an odd look. “Haven’t you heard?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’ve been in Ops all this morning.”

“The wedding’s off,” Miles explains around a mouthful of his stew. “And we’re still eating.”

“Yes, I… I can see that,” she says. “But is everything alright? Aside from the wedding being… off.”

Julian shrugs. “All we’ve heard is that Jadzia and Worf are _not_ getting married today. Or possibly ever.” He frowns. “Something to do with that Sirella woman – Martok’s wife. And Jadzia saying she doesn’t want a Klingon marriage, after all.”

“But she and Worf are still together, though?” Kira’s heart skips a beat sharply as she speaks, even though she knows it doesn’t really matter what answer the doctor gives. She lost Jadzia years ago. Last night was the last dance of what could’ve been. They were both drunk. They were both searching for comfort, Jadzia possibly only searching for an escape from the wedding of the century she’d caught herself up in. 

“I don’t know,” Julian admits. “Sisko’s with her at the moment – I haven’t spoken to her properly in days, now. How was she last night?”

Heat rising to her cheeks, Kira looks away to avoid revealing the truth in her expression somehow. “Oh, she seemed… fine. Happy about the bachelorette party, I mean. I don’t think she was overjoyed about the wedding. And there was a scuffle between her and Sirella earlier in the night.”

“Oh well,” Miles sighs. “At least the next time we get invited to a Klingon bachelor party,” he says to Julian, “we’ll know what to expect.”

Julian chuckles weakly, still looking preoccupied. Kira shares his reserve. She can only manage a strained smile. 

“Are you feeling alright, Nerys?” Julian asks, so suddenly she jumps a little in surprise. “Only you look a bit…”

“I’m fine,” she replies. “It was a big party.”

“Wish I could’ve been there,” Miles mutters. “Rather than off being tortured with ancient Klingon traditions by Worf.”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “You didn’t miss much.”

Quark catches her at the door, full of self-interested questions as always. He wants to know about Jadzia, about Sirella, about all of it. She brushes him off, too tired to argue. Her head is pounding like a drum, each beat bringing a heavy blow of aching pain – screaming the words _what the hell were you thinking, look what you’ve done, Prophets forgive you for this._

“Something getting you down, Major?” Quark asks, leaning over the bar.

“Yeah.” The distance between the Promenade and Jadzia’s quarters has never seemed so wide and terrible. She stares blankly into space, vision blurring. “I think I might’ve just ruined a wedding.”

Quark sighs, waving a hand dismissively. “Oh well. Shouldn’t trouble yourself, Major – I made sure the cancellation fees were _well_ accounted for in the fine print.” He offers a wicked grin. “Besides, I was never sold on those two.”

“No,” she agrees, “me neither.” 

*

“Wait,” Kira breathes, easing her arm from Bareil’s gentle grip. She hadn’t noticed how close they’d become during their conversation, though now it seems obvious. Bareil wants something from her. Perhaps she reminds him of his dead friend Lisea from the other side, or maybe she’s just the first person to show him any kindness in years, and now he’s latching onto it. Or maybe something worse. She’s been to the world beyond the veil. She knows what it means.

Bareil pulls back at her rejection, looking nervous behind the dark calm of his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, Nerys. I know it must be strange, after what you had with this universe’s Bareil.”

That is part of it. Being beside this Bareil is like seeing a ghost, a distorted reflection of her Antos, and even though the two men could not be less alike, some small, thinning thread still ties them together. But it wouldn’t matter even if this Bareil was _hers,_ back from the dead by some twist of fate or blessing from the Prophets. 

Too much has changed. Kira is not the woman she was.

“It’s not that,” she replies. “I…”

“You love somebody else,” he surmises, letting out a heavy sigh. “Who is it? This Shakaar fellow I keep hearing about? The doctor? The shapeshifter?”

She frowns. “No, no- Shakaar, that’s over. And I’ve never had feelings for Julian or for Odo. No, it’s none of them.”

“But it _is_ someone. I can tell.”

“How?”

“There’s a look in your eyes,” Bareil explains. “When your mind went to them just now, whoever they are, I saw it. Distant. _Yearning.”_

Kira stands slowly and walks over to the replicator, making a quiet request for a cup of Tarkalean tea – a little bitter, how she likes it. Bareil is not what he said he was. That much is clear, but the smaller revelation compared to the truth he somehow saw in her expression. It’s only been a few weeks since the not-wedding. Jadzia and Worf have finished returning all of each other’s things. They don’t talk on duty in Ops, or off duty, either, but they don’t argue. Worf is disappointed. Jadzia looks tortured. Kira sits silently at her station while she works and wonders how everything managed to become so broken. “You may be right.”

“And they don’t love you back?”

She smiles to mask the sadness stinging inside and shakes her head. “That’s not the problem.” Her tea is still too sweet. Or maybe this night is just bitter. Thinking of Jadzia and the night of the party is bitterness itself, bringing bile to the back of her throat. The taste of her regret is foul and persists every day as she sits in Ops and tries to focus on the tasks at hand, feeling Jadzia’s blue eyes burning into her skin from across the room. “It wasn’t meant to be.”

Bareil watches her as she crosses the room with her cup, seeming half-curious, half-pained. He doesn’t try to come near now. _Who are you,_ she wonders. _And why did you come for me? Who sent you?_ She sees through his disguise. _Why does this universe want to tear me into two?_

_“Dax to Kira.”_

Her heart skips at the sound of Jadzia’s voice broadcast across the communicator in her room, brighter and warmer than she remembers hearing it in weeks – since the day she emerged from her quarters with a tired-looking Benjamin Sisko and nodded silently when Julian asked if the wedding was still off. Bareil shoots her a curious glance as she sets her teacup down. “Kira here.”

_“Julian and I were wondering whether you and Bareil wanted to join us for a drink in Quark’s,”_ Jadzia says. _“If you’re not too… otherwise occupied, of course.”_

“No, we’ll be there right away!” Kira replies. “See you in a moment. Kira out.”

Bareil smiles sadly as he stands, taking her arm in his. “I see. That’s it, then.” She doesn’t have to ask what. 

*

Some part of Jadzia truly believed they could make it. That was her ridiculous Federation-brand hope for the future, even though the grimness of Kira’s expression from the beginning told her there was no chance in hell, no matter how many prayers to the Prophets they made between them. Kira pushed on for so long, even when her skin had gone to ashen grey and the blood had blended in with the crimson of her terrain uniform where it bled through the bandages, ceaseless. _Only three kilometres until the next camp. Just another three thousand metres, another few thousand more steps._

Kira collapses with a groan. She slides down to rest against a fallen tree before Jadzia can catch her, eyelids fluttering. Jadzia crouches down and applies a hypospray. Kira barely reacts. When she tries to check the wound’s dressing, Jadzia’s hand comes away sticky with blood. 

“I’ll have to change the bandages again,” she says.

“No… point…” Kira breathes. “You’ve got to go on ahead.”

She already has the clean dressing in hand, unrolling it with trembling fingers. It’s the last of the bandages they have left. Four gone in two hours. Not many people would even still be conscious after that. “I’m not leaving you, Nerys. You can make it.”

“Better Lesaran make it than me. His information… could change the war.” The rainforest is in a strange state of calm around them, the soft buzz of insects and the wind rustling in the leaves above the only sounds. Everything smells of damp earth, overpowering the blood and grime that has attached itself to Kira and Jadzia over the past few days. 

“Jadzia, I am giving you an _order,”_ Kira insists through gritted teeth. “You _will_ make the rendezvous. I’ll still be here when you return to the ship.”

_But you won’t be breathing._ The tricorder readings are simple enough to understand. Without surgery on a space station, and _soon,_ Kira will die. Her blood pressure has dropped drastically. She’s still bleeding out through the new dressing, red rising to the surface. _How did I let this happen? How did I let that Jem’Hadar get a shot at her?_

“Damn your direct orders,” she mutters. “I’m not going anywhere.” Her eyes sting with unshed tears. After everything – after all the close calls, the almosts – this _can’t_ be how it ends. She can’t just walk away.

“Jadzia, I can’t move,” Kira tells her. “I can’t make the rendezvous. But you _can._ And Lesaran’s knowledge-” Her voice cracks a little, tremulous with pain. “Is worth a lot more than just one life.”

“Not to me. Not if it’s your life in question.”

Kira shudders. She pushes Jadzia weakly away with one hand, seeming almost close to crying herself. “You’re being _selfish,_ Dax.”

The first tear treks its way down Jadzia’s cheek as she shuffles backwards on the muddy, bracken-covered ground, too overcome to hold up her own body weight any longer. Maybe she should let them both die here. Maybe that would be poetry. “I know. But Nerys, I… What are you doing.” It comes out flat, not like a question at all. The silver glint of the phaser pressing against the underside of Kira’s jaw is unnatural and bitter in the untamed beauty of the jungle around them.

“If you don’t go,” Kira warns. “I’ll pull this trigger.”

“Nerys, _please._ Don’t do this to me.”

“I mean it.” Kira’s arm shakes with the effort of holding up the weapon in her hand, finger twitching on the trigger. Perhaps the most awful thing, buried beneath layers of resentment and fear, is that Jadzia knows she could do it. Not that she would or would ever even want to, but Kira could. Worse only than letting Kira take her own life, in Jadzia’s mind, would be killing her herself. She hates the weakened but bitter certainty with which Kira holds the phaser to her own throat. She hates the tiny voice in the back of her head telling her that Kira is right.

“You are _not_ going to die,” she snarls, wiping the blood from her hands onto the mossy earth. It’s dried black beneath her fingernails, stains the cuffs on her uniform sleeves. The essence of Kira’s life, slowly draining away. Across from her, Kira blinks, and a single tear slips down over the blood and dirt muddying her pale face. Jadzia watches it go, watches Kira convulse in pain. She reaches between them and closes her hand over Kira’s own. 

“No,” Kira murmurs, but she doesn’t fight it as Jadzia eases the phaser away. “No, it’s…”

“It’s what?” Jadzia asks. “What is it, Nerys?” Her voice is stripped to the bone. Dead dry like a desert, worn-down and desolate. _I could die like this. Just from the emptiness._

Kira’s eyes have become unfocused, the last whispers of strength falling from her shoulders. “A… a waste.”

“I know,” she replies, choking on sobs. “I know, Nerys. I know, I just- Just please, stay with me. I never told you-”

“Don’t.” The murmured word reminds her of being in that corridor on Deep Space 9 again, when she almost dreamed Kira might be about to kiss her. She’d been drunk on her selfish love that night, willing to abandon the function and insult Shakaar just for the chance of having the otherwise unattainable Kira Nerys all to herself. When Lancelot tried to kiss Kira in Camelot just a few weeks earlier, before Lenara ever came and things became jumbled and ruined in her mind, Jadzia had wished it were her.

“Don’t say it,” Kira continues. Her eyes are closed now, and her head lolls to the side like a rag doll. “We… can’t.”

“I love you, Nerys,” Jadzia says, almost angry. “I always have. And I know you love me. I know you-”

But Kira is already gone.

Jadzia crumples, clutching Kira’s feverish cheeks in her hands, running fingers through the red strands of hair. The rise and fall of her chest is so tremulous now, barely holding on by a thread. Jadzia wishes she knew the Bajoran words to say to ask the Prophets for mercy, or guidance. The wormhole aliens. She never thought she understood Kira’s faith before.

“Please forgive me,” she whispers. “When it’s over. Please forgive me for this.”

Kira’s blood is red – red like her hair, red like her uniform, red like roses and the wedding dress that Jadzia never wore, and it stains everything from her fingertips to her heartstrings, as common as hydrogen in the shadows of space. 

*

“How is she?”

“Still in surgery. But Julian says she’ll be fine. She’s strong. She’ll make it through.”

Benjamin pauses for a long moment before speaking again. His eyes are fixed on the reflective surface of the tabletop before him, though really Jadzia knows he’s seeing the corpse of a Cardassian dissident, the man she failed to save. “Lasaran’s dead,” he says, by way of explanation. “Starfleet Intelligence intercepted a transmission saying that he’d been killed trying to re-enter the base at Soukara.” He looks up, and she can tell what he’s going to ask her to confess. “Could you have made the rendezvous?”

“Yes.”

“But instead, you turned back when Major Kira was injured.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Jadzia stares, wondering why he even bothers bringing up the question. “Because Kira was dying,”she replies.

“Lasaran’s information could’ve saved millions of lives.”

“I… I… She was going to _die,_ Benjamin. You can’t expect me to have just left her there alone to suffer.”

His heart isn’t in it when he says, “that was your duty, as a Starfleet officer.”

“I know.”

“This will go on your permanent service record.”

“I know.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me, old man.” Benjamin doesn’t sound angry, she realises. He sounds tired. He’s been sounding tired for months – all of them have, exhausted by the war, by the burdens they have to bear. Every day is a new dead friend. She crosses the office to sit down opposite Benjamin at his desk, searching for the right words. _I’m a broken person, really. Filled with a broken sort of love._ It came as a strange revelation a few weeks ago, when Jake asked her for comment on the state of Trill and she realised she was never going home. Or maybe she was already home. Or maybe she would never have one. But Trill wasn’t made for people like her – people who break rules, people who choose love.

She may as well rip off the plaster in one go, as Julian is fond of saying. Get it over and done with. “I’m in love with Kira.”

It takes him by surprise. Benjamin’s eyes widen, he sits forward in his chair. _So he really didn’t have a clue. None of them did._ “You are?”

“Yes,” she confirms. “I have been for years.”

Benjamin sighs heavily and brings a hand up to his face. “I take it _that_ was why the wedding never went ahead.”

“Something like it. I… was wrong. I thought I could marry Worf, but with the way Kira and I feel about each other-”

“Each _other?_ So the Major feels the same way?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Then uncomplicate it. I just wish you’d told me, Dax – someone else could’ve gone on the mission.”

She looks him dead in the eye, thinking of Kira down in the Infirmary, barely clinging to life. She’s never flown a ship more recklessly. All the way back to Deep Space 9, she was praying to anyone who would listen, _please don’t let it be a waste._ “But then Kira would’ve been left behind. She would’ve died.”

“Sometimes that’s the price of war.”

“Well it’s not a price I’m willing to pay!”

The silence lingers for a few long, tenuous moments. “All right, you’ve made your point. You’re dismissed.”

She can’t help swaying as she stands. It takes a lot out of her, these days. Loving Kira Nerys. It used to be so easy. She used to be able to keep it inside.

“I want you to know, old man,” Benjamin says as she reaches the office door. “If Jennifer, or Kasidy, had been the one lying in that clearing… I wouldn’t have gone on alone, either.”

*

The only time Kira ever feels truly at peace is when her candles are burning. She can remember how rare they were during the occupation – whole clans of people would gather around a single flame, smelling the sweet wax and listening as a thinning and frail elder told stories from before the Cardassians came, when the people worshipped openly in their temples.

It’s strange, in a way – she’s never been an anxious person. The opposite, in fact. Usually she feels harsh, as strong and hard as stone, and she thinks in straight lines. People like Jadzia, or even Julian… their minds seem to jump around like Cardassian voles, and they bite like it too. She supposes she’s a troubled soul. Children of brutal, oppressive regimes who’ve been fighting and killing since they were thirteen years old tend to be slightly wrong, in some way. She’s heard Julian call it _traumatised_ and _simply in need to support._ To her it’s wrongness. Sometimes she doesn’t even feel like an entire person. Only a bit of one – a sliver of sentience, incomplete. It’s a thought that terrorizes her.

But not when she has her candles, and her prayers. The gentle hands of the Prophets guide her. They promise her that somewhere out there, in the hidden folds of the galaxy, there is something _more_ than all this. She’s a major of the Bajoran Militia. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t sometimes dream. _Perhaps I do have an imagination after all._

Julian let her go from the Infirmary just under eight hours ago. She hasn’t allowed the candles to stop burning since.

“Prophets be my teachers,” she murmurs, sitting cross-legged before one particularly bright flame. “Show me the path to peace. Be my light in the darkness. Guide me towards contentment.”

The current shift ends in two minutes. Jadzia is still in Ops, or was, when Kira checked a few moments ago. She only visited once while Kira was recovering from her wounds. Their conversation was brief and uncomfortably impersonal. Lesaran is dead. The mission was a failure. Jadzia will likely never be chosen for command now. The moment she woke to the cool, sterile air of the Infirmary, Julian commenting something jovial about her finally being awake, she knew what’d happened.

She heard it. She was slipping into darkness as it happened, but she heard. And now she doesn’t know what to say.

Someone presses the doorbell. She stands slowly, seeing the tiny specks of fire flicker with her movement. “Come in.”

“Hello, Nerys.” Beneath her lives-learned calm, Jadzia sounds afraid.

It takes a lot of effort to turn around. Not just because Kira’s body is still aching and frail, but because she doesn’t know how to face this. The truth. Even weeks and weeks later, the ghosts of Jadzia’s hands still skim across her skin, she still feels that fire and heat, beautiful in a tainted, foul kind of way. The right thing to happen, for all the most terrible reasons.

Jadzia stands with her hands held behind her back, shoulders hunched.

“Hello,” Kira greets softly. “How… how was work?”

“Work was fine. How are you?”

Kira shrugs. “I’ve been better.”

“We need to talk.”

“Yes, I- I guess we do.”

She’s scared of Jadzia coming too close. The world inside of her is a hurricane. “I told you to leave me.” It’s not quite an accusation – there’s no hint of cruelty or blame, just acknowledgement.

“You knew I wouldn’t,” Jadzia points out. She takes a careful step towards Kira’s bubble of personal space, lips parted as she breathes in a shaky lungful of the warm, scented air. She doesn’t even seem to hide it now. Then again, neither of them has been hiding it for a while now, not since the night of the party when that second-to-last wall was broken down. “If it had been the other way around, if you could’ve made the rendezvous,” Jadzia says, “you would have gone, wouldn’t you?” She reaches out tentatively to hold Kira’s hand. Although she knows she should draw away, Kira stays still and lets their bodies meet.

There is only one honest answer she can give. “I don’t know.”

When Jadzia leans in and kisses her, it feels like the simplest and saddest thing in the world. Something in her heart cracks and turns to beautiful, addictive pain as their lips meet, almost a memory of a life that began and ended a long time ago. Kira does wish love didn’t have to hurt sometimes. Or most of the time, as it has been with the two of them. _Light only shines in the dark._ Beauty only recognisable in the suffering. The inseparability is haunting enough to sting in her eyes.

“I don’t know whether I would’ve left you,” she repeats, because it has to be said – she has to feel it.

Jadzia nuzzles into the crook of her neck, lips soft and teasing against her skin. Almost playful. But when she speaks, it’s different. Agonising. “Please, Nerys. Please don’t leave me now.”

_Don’t cry. Not when it should all be so happy._

She closes her eyes, allows the pain to sink in and fade away like the colour of old clothes left to dry in the sun. It will be all right. Jadzia holds her hand so tightly it hurts, and Kira squeezes back just as hard, feeling their fingers intertwine. It will be all right now. It has to be.

She knows only one thing. “I never could.”

Jadzia holds her in the circle formed by candles and layers on layers of darkness and light, innocence and guilt, and simply breathes. “Neither could I,” she murmurs. “I love you so much, Nerys. Since the day we met, even then.”

“Yes,” Kira agrees, laughing softly. “I know. I feel the same.” And saying it is like finally being able to breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to imagine S6 ended differently in this universe.
> 
> _She's the only one I see  
>  And she's flying through the air  
> She's the dust upon the sill  
> She's everywhere_
> 
> \-- Chewing Cotton Wool // The Japanese House


End file.
